Blyth
The Place2Be’s Blyth Hub was founded in 2006 with an initial cluster of six schools. In September 2008 four schools from the Ashington area joined the hub, including a local secondary school, where we are supporting Year 7 students. The Place2Be’s therapeutic interventions are currently available to a total school population of 3,000 children across ten schools.
The schools: Croftway Primary School, Delaval Community Middle School, Horton Grange Primary School, Jackie Milburn Campus, Malvins Close Primary School, Richard Grainger Campus, Robert Stephenson Campus, The Blyth School Community College, Thomas Bewick Campus, and Tynedale Middle School.
The Place2Be people: Our Blyth Hub has one Hub Manager, four School Project Managers (SPMs), One Transition Project Manager and 35 Place2Be Counsellors (who volunteer their time in the schools for a minimum of one day a week).
The Place2Be's work in Blyth
In the 2008/09 academic year there were 1,035 child visits to The Place2Talk made by 466 different children and 111 children accessed direct support services either through individual short-term and long-term interventions, or group work. In order to deliver these valuable services School Project Managers spent 32 hours meeting with parents, 117 hours working with teachers and other school staff, and 22 hours in joined up wok with external agencies.
Demographic and population statistics in Blyth
As The Place2Be schools span more than one district in Blyth, the demographic profile of the Northumberland Local Authority is presented in this section.
According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the population residing in Northumberland was estimated to be 311,000 in mid-2008, of whom 49% were male and 51% were female (NOMIS, 2009). The Northumberland population is predominantly White (97.7%); this compares with 88.2% in England. A further 0.9% of the Northumberland population are Asian or Asian British, 0.6% are of Mixed ethnicity, 0.5% are Chinese or from ‘Other’ ethnic groups, and 0.3% are Black or Black British (ONS, 2009).
Northumberland is an area with pockets of severe deprivation. According to the 2007 English Indices of Multiple Deprivation (IMD); Blyth Valley has an overall rank of 80 out of 354 local authorities. It has a rank of 168 on the income measure and 133 on the employment measure (Communities and Local Government, 2007). During the period April 2008 – March 2009, 75.7% of the residents in Northumberland who were eligible to work were in employment, which is slightly above the national average of 73.9% in England (NOMIS, 2009).
Statistics presented by the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) show that the proportion of pupils in Blyth Valley achieving level 4 or above at Key Stage 2 (KS2) - the anticipated level of attainment for pupils aged 11 in their final year at primary school in 2008 - was 81% for English, 76% for Mathematics, and 87% for Science (this compares with 81%, 79%, and 88%, respectively, in England) (DCSF, 2008).
In Primary schools within the Northumberland Local Authority, 19.2% of children had some degree of Special Educational Needs (SEN). This included 9% with a Full Statement of SEN or support at School Action Plus, and 10.2% supported at School Action. This compares with 10.5% and 13.8%, respectively, in England (DCSF, 2008).